365 days for you

     The end of the year and the beginning of the year for me have been a kind of depressing time of life for me lately because I get to the marker of reminding me that once again I did not reach the goals I truly wanted to, nor do I feel like I grew to the extent that I wanted to.      This quarantine has brought on a time of change for me, my family has been trying to exercise more, to become more healthy and fit. I have seen on social media the personal evolutions that many are going through to restore and recenter themselves on things that matter most to them. I made new goals for myself and honestly it has been a really hard process. It's a constant struggle of feeling like I am taking 2 steps forward and then sliding backward over whatever ground I may have gained while hiking the mountain of self-esteem and personal growth.      I imagine many of you are feeling the same, wanting so badly to change to become a better, happier, and he...

     Years ago a professor shared a story with us in one of his lectures. He shared a story of a young boy and his best friend, he and his friend often liked going outside and playing. Oftentimes getting into mischief as is to be expected with boys. Usually, they just liked running around and playing in the dirt and around town as most boys do. One day as they were out playing together they came across a building that had many large wood boxes stacked neatly outside, the boxes were away from the street and out of the way and two young boys looked like the perfect play equipment.       The boys played for hours laughing and enjoying their time out of the house unaware of any nearby danger. Eventually, playtime came to a close and they returned to their houses seemly untouched by any harm that could have befallen them as they were away from the house that day. Days later his friend fell ill, in the days that followed he got worse and passed away.   ...

The past few days it has really hit me how much grief and loss affect each of us in our lives. No matter how much those around us seem to have it all together there is a great chance there is something that they are grieving in their life. In September my family almost lost my mom, she has always struggled with kidney stones and due to some oversight she ended up in the ICU with sepsis. For days I waited at home unable to do anything to help feeling almost crippled by the pain and fear that I might lose her. One night I went up and laid on her bed and wound up a music box and cried. I didn't want my younger brothers to see me completely fall apart so I stayed in my parents room until I had nothing left to cry. My mom recovered and was able to return home, but even now 5 months later there are moments I can still see that she is still healing from the experience. I know looking inward on my heart that I sometimes feel flashes of the fear creep back in, and that in my ow...

You don't know me, I don't know you but I want to I don't want to steal your freedom, I don't wanna change your mind I don't have to make you love me, I just wanna take your time -Sam Hunt      I had no way of knowing that the evening of July 22, 2015 would change my life forever. My summer had just died down, I was finished with my summer schooling job at the elementary school that I work at. It had become my goal to fill up as many as my evenings possible, in the fall I was starting school back up as a student at the University of Utah, and I would be working so I knew I wasn't going to have very much time for friends and socializing.     There are several details that lead me to the baseball diamond that night, most of them seeming to being inconsequential. Really the watered down version is that I was not planning on being there that night, I was no longer living in the ward and I don't like watching baseball. But I was there, and that is wh...

    I miss writing. I miss the way it sooths my soul, the way it empowers me to look at the details of my life in a positive light. There has been so much going on in my life lately that writing basically got buried in a corner forgotten.      Some of it might be due to the fact that havent felt very positively about my life lately. But I miss the feeling of being in-love with life, I miss feeling alive. Somewhere inside of myself I know that if I want to feel those things again I need to find the courage to pull out the things I love and dust them off. At first it might not be very pretty, like a painter that is out of practice there are bound to be some duds before there are masterpieces.     Here I am making it full circle with a goal that is the very reason I started this blog, I want to start writing everyday. Writing things that I hope can help and inspire others and maybe in the writings of my soul I will be able to refind myself.   ...

     More than a year ago I found myself living in a cold little apartment with my husband, during one of the coldest winters of my life. Whether it was cold because the weather or because my marriage was failing and I felt alone and isolated I'm not sure. Either way, it felt cold and barren, I came home after work to an empty apartment and would get to work on trying to start the wood burning stove so that whenever my husband came home the apartment would not be quite so frigid.      I have never been very good at lighting fires, this was no exception. I made a game out of it, trying to see if I could light the fire with only one match. It didn't work. I finally just went to the store and got a lighter because I was going through matches at a ridiculous rate. As the year went on my husband moved out, I moved back in with my parents and I realized the week of Valentine's day that I was pregnant. The emotional chill of some of those moments reminded me of ...

     Exactly 450 days ago I got married, the day that everyone says is the happiest day of your life. I was happy, incredibly happy. But happiness is a strange and interesting emotion, it's not like instant gratification or even like the anticipation of a surprise, it's soft and quiet. Happiness comes through the application of true principles in life sometimes the result is so subtle that you will completely miss the happiness if you don't know that it is real and existing right in front of you. Happiness is like a habit and if you stop nourishing it, it will fade and completely disappear, most of the time we don't notice the absence of light and happiness until it is so drastic that it would take a great change of action to restore it.     On January 24th my husband moved out after almost 13 months of marriage. I had always known marriage would be hard and that it took effort and change to make it work, I saw my older siblings in their marriages and I knew w...